Staff Book Reviews

Magical realism is why I read Sarah Addison Allen. That and good stories. The first of her books that I read, was the first one she wrote. Garden Spells, was light and airy and simply delightful. Come to think of it, those are the same adjectives that I would use to describe each of the books she has written, including First Frost.

I fall in love with stories, and with characters, and this author know how to write about lovable and interesting characters. They are all ordinary people, living ordinary lives, except that they all have a wee tinge of magic within them. Of course, I believe that this is true of all of us, some just recognize it and make use of it, other let it lie dormant and it only shows up once in a while when it is most needed, but that's another story.

This story, First Frost is about the Waverley family. Each of the women in the Waverley family has a gift, a little something extra. Some might call it a knack. But really, they just recognize that touch of magic within themselves, and they use it. The women and girls in this story are Claire, and her young daughter Mariah. Then there is Sydney, and her teen-aged daughter Bay. Evanelle and Mary appear as well, Evanelle in this world and Mary in the next.

Just as the summer really comes to an end is a time when things in the lives of the Waverley's tumble around and make life a little difficult for a while. This time of uncertainty comes to an end when the apple tree in the garden of the Waverley house, where Claire and her family live, blooms along with the first frost. That an unusually magical family should live with an unusually magical and might I add wise, apple tree is no surprise. When the Blooms make an appearance the family gathers beneath its boughs and the world begins to come right again. Sometimes in very surprising ways.

As always, when you read a book by Sarah Addison Allen, there is a little take-away that you might not expect. A wee bit of wisdom, or maybe just not feeling quite so alone. I recommend this book. In fact, I also recommend all of her books for anyone who likes a good story and wants to read a book that will allow you to close the book with a smile on your face.

FIRST FROST will be published in January 2015. Her earlier novels include: Garden Spells (2007), The Sugar Queen (2008), The Girl Who Chased the Moon (2010), The Peach Keeper (2011), and Lost Lake (2014).

This is the beautiful and heartbreaking story of Guilia who was living in the Convent of Santa Maria. It was not her vocation to become a nun, but a series of events connected to Maestra Humilita brought her there. It was these events and the devotion she felt to Maestro Humilita that kept her there. She was content enough, learning and working with some of the many gifted artists in the convent. With a talent that she never dreamed she had, Gulia learned to mix and use color and to draw and paint.

But Humilita was dead now, and Guilia was left in a precarious and vulnerable situation. Humilita left the formula for the color "passion blue" with Guilia in order to keep it safe and away from those who would misuse it. Promising to do this put Guilia's life in jeopardy.

Furthermore, the events that led up to her life in the convent left her with the ability to hear the song of the colors with which she painted. This was an extraordinary gift. She loved the colors and their songs but found that the songs faded as the paint dried. Each of them faded away and became silent except for "passion blue," the color that was created and used by her mentor and benefactress, Maestra Humilita. "Passion blue "retained its song after the paint was dry on the canvas.

After Humilita's death the position of Maestra of the Convent of Santa Maria fell to Domenica. Domenica was a bully and clearly unsuited for a position of directing other sisters. Finding herself in a position of power brought out the worst in her. She threatened Guilia privately and humiliated her publicly. Merely attending to the duites she had been given was nearly more than Guilia could manage. The other sisters feared Domenica too much to try to help. Shortly before she was to take her final vows and spend a lifetime behind the walls of the Convent of Santa Maria being only a slave to the domineering and relentless Domenica, a decision had to be made.

Guiliana gathered together her few possessions including her drawings and drawing materials and a small silver plate pilfered from the convent and made her way out into the world. She stepped out into the unknown, her only plan being to disguise herself as a boy and find her way to the home of Humilita's friend. She had been given a bequest from her mentor that included letters from this man, and she had reason to hope that he would help to protect her and the color and song of "passion blue." This is the story of that decision and that journey.

"Soulminder" by Timothy Zahn is completely different from any other book that I have read. It was very good and had as many twists and turns as a Pennsylvania highway.

A five year old boy died in the arms of his father after an automobile accident. It was a tragedy and a travesty. The boy's father was a doctor who could not save his own son. So Dr. Adrian Sommers walked away from the accident and from his life as a physician to devote himself to stopping tragedies like this from happening. This project was called Soulminder. He and a partner devoted their careers to saving the lives of others. At least that is what Dr Sommers had in mind. It seemed that his partner, Sands, had some ideas of her own. Her idea involved making a lot of money and perhaps even achieving immortality.

For years Sommers and Sands worked at developing a device to trap the soul as it left the body at the moment of death. Trapping and holding it until the body could be healed, the soul could then renter the body. One of the first test subjects was a five year old boy. This mattered to Sommers. It mattered a great deal because his vision and dream of saving lives that could otherwise be lost to tragedies and accidents was about to come to fruition. This was a blessing he was giving to the people of the world, one that he himself had experienced after a surprise attack took his life. He knew what lay beyond, but he also knew what it felt like to take back his life.

It took some time, but Sommers eventually realized that something was happening with Soulminder. Its original purpose was being skewed, hijacked, and used for purposes he had never imagined.In fact, it was being twisted and used for evil. He had lost control and was unable to stop the steamrolling effect it had on Soulminder. How could he stop it?

It was amazing to me to see how many ways such a good thing could be turned to evil purposes. I read this in one sitting, because I needed to know what was going to happen next and if it could be stopped. Can a book like this ever have a happy ending? It's hard to imagine, but I wanted to be an optimist and hoped for a happy ending. To find out, readers should give this one a try. It has great characters and an interesting story.

"The Half Life of Molly Pierce" is a young adult novel written by Katrina Leno. It is a compelling and intriguing read. Many YA books are filled with vampires and shape changers. Today, there is a huge audience for paranormal reads, and I like them also. This book, however, is filled with friendship, family, and the struggles of a young girl. There is mystery too, one that revolves around the young main character.

Molly's family owns a bookstore, and she has a sister who is wise beyond her years and a sympathetic brother. They are all well- rounded and interesting characters. They are likable also, as are the more peripheral characters in this story. It is difficult to set this book aside, because the reader is so drawn into the question of why Molly has gaps in her memory and why she meets up with people who seem to know her. And who is Mable?

The story begins with Molly confessing that she sometimes finds herself in unfamiliar places and doing things without any idea of how or why she is doing them. In fact, this is exactly the situation in the opening pages. While she is trying to remember where she is headed and why she isn't in school, there is an accident. A young man is hit while weaving in and out of traffic on his motorcycle. He is hit, flies over the roof of her car, and lands in the street as Molly manages to brake so as not to hit him.

When she jumps frantically out of the car, she is certain that he was riding so fast and being so reckless because of her. She just has no idea why and no idea who he is. When she reaches him, he looks at her and calls her by name. This is where the story really begins. Who is this young man who is just able to say his own name and ask her to stay with him when the ambulance arrives? What happens in the next chapters is a good solid story that is perfect for not only the target audience, but anyone looking for a light and interesting read.

"The Paying Guests" by Sarah Waters begins in 1922. The war is newly over, many men are dead, families are shattered, and an entire way of life has simply faded away for so many. Many ex-servicemen are out of work and desperate. Life has changed for everyone, everywhere, not just in south London where this story takes place.

The Wrays' home is now empty of all its men, husbands and sons. No longer able to employ help for keeping the house as they once did, Frances and her mother are struggling to make ends meet. Frances has taken on the cooking and cleaning duties, and yet the bills mount, the butcher wants paid, and life is looking pretty grim. Frances' mother can't bear to watch her daughter perform the housekeeping tasks and busies herself with charities and good works as much as she is able. They have made the decision to rent some of their rooms, a move made by many in their situation.

The time had come and the Wrays waited for their paying guests. The young couple was late, and the women were anxious. It had been a difficult decision to share their home with strangers, and waiting was maddening. And then, finally they were there. Len and Lillian and a precarious pile of belongings pulled up in front of the house in a large wagon. It seemed to the Wrays that they were not so boisterous, not so disturbing, on the day they visited the rooms. But now, there was nothing they could do. So Frances and her mother welcomed the couple, showed them to their rooms, and tried to become accustomed to sharing their space with people they didn't know.

As the days passed, it became a bit easier to find Lily and Len in the garden or coming in from using the WC. In fact, Frances made up her mind to become more friendly with Lily. This offer of friendship was much easier than she thought it would be. She found herself being drawn to Lily in a romantic way, and Lily responded to it.

They had to settle for brief encounters in hidden doorways and stolen trysts during moments when they found themselves alone. This was not Frances' first such relationship. Her mother became suspicious of the time the two young women spent together. Their feelings became stronger, and it became more difficult to hide these feelings. This seemed to be an impossible relationship. Then things became even more difficult. Someone died. Painful days followed for those who were left behind. How could any of them go on?

Sarah Waters is the author of several other books, including "Fingersmith and Affinity" as well as "The Little Stranger." All proved to be good reads.

"The Hawley Book of the Dead" by Chrysler Szarlan left me wanting to know more. So having just closed the covers of this book, I was already hoping for a sequel. This was a wonderful read!

Jeremy, Reve, Faith, Hope, and Caleigh were all beautiful and content people. Performing in their own theater, this happy family was surrounded by more kinds of magic than even they knew. A lovely, old fashioned but beautifully restored theater is where they worked and performed their magic, both mundane and true. They made their home in Las Vegas and raised their three very special daughters there. This perfect family also included Nathan, a cousin to Jeremy.

They all worked in the family business. Reve and Jeremy wrote and performed their own shows, hosted other magicians, and tried to live as normal a life as possible. But normal in their home was a little different than what normal was in most others. Reve came from a long line of women who had special gifts as well as beauty. Her daughters had gifts of their own which we see as the story unfolds. And in life and work it seems that happiness must always be paid for in some way. The Maskelyne family would pay a heavy price for theirs.

Reve, whose full name like that of her grandmother's before her, was Revelation. She was strong in many ways, but much was asked of her. Nothing weakens us like grief, and with fear coming in a close second, her days changed from days of warmth and love to striving for survival. Thank goodness for the long line of Revelations who stood behind her in this world and in the next. She would need all of them.

After tragedy struck the family they moved across the country to her long- abandoned home in Hawley Five Corners. There she would be closer to her family and to the magic which would help to save them all. Reve would find the way and enough magic within herself to do so. Many twists and turns, many quirky events, and many secrets are contained in this book about the many generations of Revelation's family.

This book, like other magical books including "The Lace Reader" by Brunonia Barry, "The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane" by Katherine Howe, and the Newford series by Charles de Lint will draw you in, delight you, make you fall in love with some of the characters, and leave you wanting more.

"The Book of Life" by Deborah Harkness is book three of the All Souls Trilogy. Once again the most prominent roles in the story are those of Diana and Matthew, followed closely by members of their unusual families. Book two of the trilogy, "Shadow of Night," left us hanging. Finally, I was very glad to be able to catch up on the Clairmont and Bishop families. We pick up the story soon after the return of Matthew and Diana who have been traveling through time in pursuit of Ashmole 782, the Book of Life.

From the very beginning of this story in book one, "A Discovery of Witches," it has been very clear that despite the colorful characters and their families, the Book of Life holds a very important place in the plot of this story. No time traveling is in this book. The couple has returned armed with a great deal of information and a firm commitment to find the book and put things right in the world. For more years than any mere human can remember, there has been a Congregation made up of vampires, witches, and daemons. Their purpose from the beginning was to keep these factions apart. The reasons for this are explained. But like everything else, even the supernatural world has to change with the times. The need for this change becomes particularly clear when new information comes to light.

Many of the vampires, and even daemons and a witch or two, have lived long lives and have spent them gaining knowledge. Some of them have been working to investigate what it is in the DNA of the so called non- humans that make them different. They have made great strides, and yet something was missing. There was a part of the puzzle that needed to be found to make their research complete. Who knew that this would be found in an ancient and enchanted text? Even more surprising was how the information from the Book of Life would be found and brought to their attention.

Well, the Book of Life proved many things. The search for it brought out the best of these families and answered many questions. It brought out the best in all who were involved in the search. Many changes were made, and some families were able to thrive and grow while others suffered losses. But these are points that are best left to those who read not only this book, but the Harkness trilogy. Sadly, this has come to an end. But as we all know, some endings are merely pathways to new beginnings. So who really knows what will happen next?

As you may have guessed, "Small Blessings: A Novel" by Martha Woodroof is a nice story. This is a story about nice, normal everyday people. And this is exactly what makes it interesting. Nice normal people have a great deal more going on in their lives than meets the eye.

Tom and Marjory Putnam live in a small home on a college campus. Agnes Tuttle, Marjory's mother, lives with them. Agnus is a devoted person who gave up her career as a lawyer to come and help to care for her daughter. Tom has been a good husband. He fell in love with Marjory and married her, even though he knew that she was broken on the inside. When it became clear that life itself was breaking Marjory more each day, Agnes came to help care for her daughter. Marjory had problems interacting with others and was happiest safe at home with her scrapbooks and her familiar and comforting surroundings. Tom was always good and kind to her.

When Tom was feeling unloved and unhappy, a brief lapse occurred which led to a short affair. It lasted only weeks, and in the end it meant nothing. Finding out about this lapse seemed to take away what was left of Marjory, leaving only an empty shell who went through the motions and was cared for by two people who did love her.But even though there was love, there was little that could be called happiness in the Putnam home.

There were many others on campus who lived like this as well. They were straight forward and well- educated people who carried on with the business of life, appearing to not have a single care in the world. They taught or attended class, they worked at their jobs, and they met socially as expected in the village that was the campus. But remember, everyone we meet carries more within them than they allow the world to see. So each of these normal people had struggles of one kind or another. They simply held them inside and pretended to be what they were willing to allow the world to see. And all was well.

One day a bright light seemed to shine over the college. The light came in the form of Rose Callahan. She arrived to work in the bookstore, and suddenly the people she met seemed to feel happier. Even Rose herself felt happier. This was a mystery to her, because Rose knew just how much she hid from the world. It just seemed that here, in this place, her light shone brighter. And because of Rose and her light and heart, things began to change. Even the broken seemed to mend.

"If Nuns Ruled The World" by Jo Piazza is not a book just for nuns or Catholics to read. It is a wonderful work of non -fiction that gives credit to specific people for accomplishments that go above and beyond the call of duty. The fact that they are nuns is really secondary to the fact that they are extraordinary people. To paraphrase the author, she thinks these women are rock stars, and she wants to tell their stories. Jo Piazza is an experienced journalist who writes for several well- known publications, and it shows.

She begins with what has been an investigation by the Vatican into what nuns as individuals and groups have been doing over the past years. This investigation was begun in 2008 by the Congregation for the Institutes of Consecrated Life and the Societies of Apostolic Life. An inquiry into the quality of life of the American nun was initiated on the theory that some of them had gone astray.

It is certainly no secret that the sisters live differently now than they did prior to 1962 when Pope John XXIII informed them that they should go out into the world and serve. Gone were most of the habits, and things began to change for the better!

Some of what readers will find in this book follow:

Sister Megan Rice is 82 and has dedicated her life to disarmament of nuclear weapons throughout the world.

Sister Simone Campbell of "Nuns on a Bus" fame discloses the "Faithful Budget", an interfaith budget crafted by Christian, Jewish, and Muslim religious organizations that calls for a reduction in military spending and more aid to the poor. This budget was delivered to Capitol Hill and was ignored. She wrote the famous "Nun's Letter" that was signed by leaders of Catholic Sisters who supported the ACA.

The Iron Nun, Sister Madonna, is introduced. She is a feisty octogenarian who will have a story for the readers.

Sister Diana was kidnapped and tortured for standing by the people of Guatemala and teaching their children. After her recovery she went on to help and support other victims of various types of torture.

What happens to babies born in prison in Long Island City, Queens, New York? Sister T can tell you. She can tell you what happens to their mothers, also. She helps many former convicts become whole, functioning citizens once again. Ask anyone in the neighborhood, and they will have a Sister Tesa story.

Tens nuns, ten amazing stories are in this book. And I have a feeling that this is just the tip of the iceberg. This book contains titles of books written by some of the sisters whose stories are shared. I plan to read a few. I hope you do, too. This is a small book filled with big stories and immense accomplishments.

A young girl named Juneau has lived with her clan in the Alaskan wilderness since WWIII poisoned the rest of the world with radiation. They are among the few who survived. Hiding from any others who may be out there, became a way of life.

The clan, a small group of adults and their children, survives by living completely off the land. They hunt, raise food, and educate the children using an old "Encyclopedia Britannica" and a few other books that are only available to a select few. One of the most important things taught to the children of the clan is that they should never step outside the boundaries set for them. They are taught that danger is outside the boundaries. This was taken very seriously by all members of the clan, at least that is what everyone believed.

Juneau is one of the special ones. She is seventeen years old and lives with her father, since her mother died in an accident when Juneau was five years old. She is being groomed to be the clan Sage, a position currently held by Whit, her mentor. It was Juneau's mother who was originally tapped for that position, due to the strength of her connection to the Yara. Yara is the power that courses through the universe and connects all things. Juneau is particularly adept at connecting with and using that power. She is also one of the best hunters in the clan.

Early in the story she is sent out to hunt for the clan. She is sent on her own because she is capable and enjoys some solitary time. She does indeed find a large caribou, brings down the huge beast, thanks him for giving his life to her clan, and then manages to load him for the trip back to her village. But long before she was close to home, she heard a noise that she had never heard before. It was the sound made by the blades of a helicopter. She knew all about them, having read through the "Encyclopedia Britannica." She also knew that they meant one thing and one thing only, danger. When she arrived home, Juneau's father and everyone was gone. It was up to Juneau to find and rescue them.

But can she achieve this goal alone? Will she reach her clan in time? But the burning question in her mind is why. Why did someone come and take away everyone she knew? But it soon becomes clear that there are more mysteries here than she first thought. Her journey brings her far more questions than answers.

The Hundred-Year House, Rebecca Makkai's second novel, is an absorbing story about several generations of one family and the estate that they own. Full of twists and surprises the plot keeps the reader guessing until the very end. The book is divided into four parts, each moving back through the years to provide the entire explanation of what happened in that house.

In 1999 Doug and Zee move into the coach house that is on her mother's estate, Laurelfield. Her mother Gracie and her second husband still live in the mansion in which Zee had lived as a child. Now a college professor, Zee agreed to move back home to ease the financial strain of Doug's unemployment. He is working on a book about the poet Edwin Parfitt that he hopes will lead to a tenure-track position, once he gets it published. In the meantime Doug and Zee save money by living in the coach house. Another reason, more compelling to Doug, is that Edwin Parfitt lived at Laurelfield during the years that it had been an artists' colony. Zee's great-grandfather turned the mansion into a retreat for creative people after his wife committed suicide there. For decades painters, sculptors, actors, and writers stayed there to develop their art. Eventually, the family closed the colony so that Gracie and her first husband could have it as a home. But all the records of the artist's colony remained stored in the attic of the mansion. These files, Doug thinks, would be an excellent source for his own book. However, Gracie fiercely guards the records, allowing no one access to them.

As if to make life more difficult for Doug, Gracie invites her stepson and his wife to move into the coach house. Though originally designed to house two families, the building only has one kitchen. Naturally, the two couples can't completely avoid each other. Jay, the stepson, has lost his job and his wife Miriam is an artist. While Zee is at work and Jay is busy elsewhere, Miriam and Doug bump into each other several times a day. Soon Doug is confiding in Miriam things he is afraid to share with Zee, including the plan to steal the files on Edwin Parfitt at Laurelfield. The secrets that Doug uncovers in the rotting pages of the colony's history changes the lives of everyone living there.

Part II moves back to 1955 to explain Gracie's behavior. As a bride she lived at Laurelfield with George, her new husband. Because he was an abusive drunk, George wasn't considered fit for the society in which Grace's family lived. To keep them out of sight, her father reclaimed the mansion from the artists. Alone and bored, Grace looks through the colony's records, just for something to do. In those files she finds stunning secrets about her own family.

Going back to 1929, Part III describes life in the artists' colony during Edwin Parfitt's stay. The owner, Grace's father, had hinted that he wanted to close the colony. All its inhabitants were so distraught they devise a plan to blackmail him into leaving them at Laurelfield. When he and young Grace arrive to visit, the artists put their scheme into effect.

The story ends in 1900, relating the original reason the mansion was designed and built.

A novel about the surprises life offers, The Hundred-Year House has a many-layered plot with engaging and intertwined characters. The well constructed story unfolds in reverse time revealing that nothing at Laurelfield is as it first seems. The twists and turns in this clever book come to a satisfying end that will make readers want to read it over again.

"Painted Horses" by Malcolm Brooks is a beautifully told story. Like all of the best stories, there is a little bit of everything here. The story takes place in the 1950s, but it doesn't feel dated. There are just enough characters to make it interesting, a touch of romance, and a great deal of determination. I refuse to demean this by calling it a coming- of- age story, but there is within the pages a girl who becomes a woman. The ending of this book is like fireworks at the end of a perfect 4th of July. It has a wonderful ending, the exact ending that this story deserves.

Catherine Lemay has parents who love her and a home that was much more than just comfortable. She was brought up to be the perfect young lady. Her parents were anglophiles, and so she became one herself. She was just the daughter they hoped she would be, sensible, polite, and talented. But somewhere deep inside there was a different Catherine, one with bigger dreams. After spending time in Julliard's Conservatory program, she applied for and received a Fulbright Scholarship to Cambridge and packed her bags to study piano in England.

Once there, she realized that she was not living her own dream, but the dream her parents had for her. She realized this when she visited Fleet Street and stumbled onto and stepped into an archeological dig dating back to Roman times. She realized that this was where she was meant to be, not sitting behind a piano keyboard and dressed like a princess. Digging, craping, and finding was what she was meant to do. It was what made her heart sing and her life feel worthwhile.

Catherine was able to change her course of study and work at the Roman dig. After more than a year she went home to her long neglected family and fiance. It was through happenstance (or was it?) that she ran into a man who pointed her toward a job with the Smithsonian, actual field work that was required ahead of a dam project out west. And this is where things get interesting, and so do the people. We meet John H, the man with the painted horse, and Miriam, a young Native American, and her family. Catherine, with Miriam at her side, goes down into the gorge to evaluate the land that many of the Native Americans called sacred. Sacred is difficult to describe to someone whose deity is more of the green variety. The gorge will change Catherine's life in every possible way, but not just hers.

Malcolm Brooks is a writer to watch. He along with Wiley Cash seem to have found the magic of writing again. Both of them will draw you into worlds that you will be reluctant to leave. As for" Painted Horses," I give it 4.5 of 5 stars and not only recommend it, but encourage you to try it.

"The Queen of the Tearling: A Novel " by Erika Johansen is a gripping read with Kelsea, a young woman, as the main character. More than anything this book reminds me of a series by Kristen Cashore. "Graceling," "Bitterblue,"and "Fire" were spellbinding. A young woman of strength and wisdom beyond her years can be found in these books as well.

This book opens with Kelsea in a tree watching her future approach in the form of a group of soldiers, the Queen's Guard. She always knew that she was to be the next queen, but this meant little to her beyond lessons and some tiresome training. She was raised far from the palace and had no experience with society and royalty. Now it was her nineteenth birthday. The time had come to remove the regent, her uncle, a man of no honor and much greed, from the throne and take control of the people who waited for the true queen. Kelsea had her doubts about her abilities to rule and to be responsible for the lives of so many. But she also knew that it was her destiny. She had to at least try. It was her good fortune to be surrounded by men who had been the Queen's Guard for her mother, the woman who sent her away to save her life and put her into the care of two good and honorable people. They had done their job well. Kelsea slid from the branch of the tree to stride into her future.

This book is filled with adventure and some misadventure as well. As she rode into her keep, she was told that this was where she would write the first page of her history as the Queen of the Tearling. She made a grand entrance, and within moments of entering the keep where her uncle had held court and squandered the lives of the people of the Tearling, she managed in one stroke to gain the hearts and loyalty of her people, as well the Queen's Gurard who would guard her. The grand entrance Kelsea made saved the lives of many people and emptied the cages that had moments before been filled with people in flames. Things were going to change and change quickly.

Kelsea was brave, gifted, and willing to take the advice of those who had more experience than she. She learned quickly who could be trusted, even though there were those who questioned some of her choices, especially the masked thief who helped to rescue her as she rode away from her old life towards the new one. From the moment that she stepped up and ordered the regent off of her throne, she was fighting not only for the throne but for her life. I can hardly wait to discover where her story takes us. I suspect that there will be many surprises, and I look forward to reading about them.

This book is appropriate for young adults, and I recommend it highly for adults as well.

"Hard Choices" by Hillary Rodham Clinton is not a light summer beach read. It is however, a worthy one that I was anxious to read to gain insight into Hillary's years as Secretary of State. Also, I was interested in comparing the stories and experiences to those of Madeleine Albright who served as Secretary of State for eight years during Bill Clinton's years in the White House. I would like to mention that her book "Madam Secretary" is well worth reading, quite compelling, and very personal at times.

During Hillary's early years, shortly after college and after marrying Bill, she moved to Arkansas and was a co-founder of the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families. She served as chairman for the Legal Services Corporation, became a partner in a prestigious law firm, and was First Lady of Arkansas, where she tasked herself with reforming the state's education system. As First Lady of the United States, she concentrated on the Clinton health care plan, the State Children's Health Insurance Program, and Safe Families act. Then she became a Senator for the state of New York, making her the first First Lady of the United States to hold a public office.

But getting back to "Hard Choices," I have to admit that the first thing I did when opening the cover of this book was to turn to the pages of photographs that are included. Some of them were familiar, others more personal, and all of them thought- provoking in some way. It was fascinating to see these captured moments of time.

The book opens during the days following the election of 2008 when the then President elect requested that Hillary join his team as Secretary of State. Here she chronicles the letdown that she and her team felt after the election. Hillary then addresses her decision to not only support our newly elected president, but to encourage her team and her followers to do the same to unite in order to do what was best for our country. At first unwilling to take on the office, she remembered one of the historic figures who had been most inspiring to her over the years, William Henry Seward. He was first Governor then Senator of New York and Secretary of State for Abraham Lincoln, who invited Seward to that office after defeating him for the Republican nomination. The story was chronicled in Doris Kearns Goodwin's fantastic book "Team of Rivals."

After accepting the office of Secretary of State, Clinton visited 112 countries and traveled nearly a million miles with her staff. This book is a diagram of the strategies employed during her years in office, interspersed with personal experiences and opinions. We are treated to behind the scenes looks at what went on during the many diplomatic missions and military situations with which she was involved over her four years in office.

There are explanations of how the media affects politics and how our country works like a finely built clock with many parts and many teams working in conjunction with each other to form just the right balance to hopefully reach the outcome that is best. We are told about the country's successes and failures. There are entertaining stories of meetings and friendships formed with the heads of state of many countries and how these same connections hold and affect our government even today.

The Middle East and Vladimir Putin are frequently mentioned and the importance of our relationships with Asian countries. This is an altogether satisfying and informative read.

Many of us log onto the internet first thing in the morning. We have a cup of coffee at hand and not much on our minds just yet, except a desire to check our email or a bid pending on Ebay. Maybe we even take a quick look at Amazon to see if we want to pick up that latest book on our wish list at Amazon or if we should just pick it up at the library. I doubt many of us ever stop to think of what might happen if the internet had a mind of i's own.

Dorothy is an AI program, Artificial Intelligence, and was created within NASA to be the computer program that would run the Kraken Project. She would be aboard an unmanned craft that would land in the Kraken Sea, the largest ocean on Titan, Saturn's largest moon. It is common for NASA to name their projects and common for programmers to name their programs. Dorothy was named after Dorothy Gale of "The Wizard of Oz" because like her namesake, Dorothy would be bravely traveling into unknown territory.

This book opens on the morning of Dorothy's dress rehearsal. This is the day when she was to be placed in a simulated environment to see how she would faire on Titan and if there were any kinks that needed to be worked out. As it happens, there were no kinks. Dorothy has been created to react to obstacles and find ways around them. She was created to be a self taught program which would just try and try again until any problems were solved. When the unattractive but seemingly indestructible ship where Dorothy would live was ready to be tested, she was loaded into its computer system, and the operation to simulate Titan's environment began. It worked perfectly. Everything went without a hitch. All systems were go.

The testing team including Melissa Shepherd who was the primary creator of the Dorothy program, her assistant Patricia and good friend, and team member Jack Stein were all pleased with the results and ready to end the simulation when something entirely unexpected happened. Dorothy felt her environment, and she felt fear. The very code that made her perfect for the job, made her just a little too perfect. When she began to feel her environment being taken from her, she became filled with fear, and her first reaction was to fight. And fight she did. This fight resulted in the loss of a large building at Goddard Space Center, and seven team members were dead. Dorothy escaped. Her escape route was the internet itself. The endless web circles unseen and connects all things and all places that humans have been able to access.

While recovering in the hospital, Melissa was contacted by Dorothy via Skype on her laptop. Dorothy was terrified and angry. Melissa was horrified to realize just how strong her AI program had become when a threat from Dorothy became all too real. The laptop began to burn up when Dorothy took control. Terror set in when Melissa realized that not only could Dorothy attack her, but that the program was able to access any and all networks and could in fact, be a threat to all of mankind.

Melissa was frightened, and she ran. The story of what happens next is enough to make those of us who are the biggest fans of computers and the internet think twice. Was there any stopping an angry, intelligent computer program from carrying out every threat? Maybe. And that is this story. Recommended.

"A Discovery of Witches" is the first novel of the All Souls Trilogy by Deborah Harkness. This is a difficult book to classify. We might call it urban fantasy, paranormal romance, historical Fiction, or suspense. But I think I will go with them all. The same can be said of book two in this trilogy " A Shadow of Night." I will review both of these, as the third and final book "The Book of Life" was just recently published this July.

So, to start at the very beginning, we meet Diana Bishop, a professor from Yale who is studying ancient texts of alchemy in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. Diana is no ordinary professor, as she is descended from the first witch who lost her life during the Salem Witch Trials. Magic has always been a part of Diana's life, although she might deny that. She refused to study it with her family as a young girl and has carried on without it for years, making her own way by her own intelligence and her own persistence. During the days she has spent in the library, she has called up several of the ancient books, and quite unwittingly a long lost manuscript that appears in the stack near her requested books. She didn't even have to touch it to know that it was enchanted. Since she tries to avoid magic, at first she considers simply returning it. But the researcher and historian in her can't help but to take a look. Thus begins a chain of events that will change her life forever.

She soon meets up with the incredibly dashing and irresistible Matthew Clairmont who also just happens to be watching her as she pulls another volume from the shelves. The fact that he is clearly a vampire doesn't escape her notice. But when she finds out that he is also over 1,500-years-old and extremely powerful, this shocks even Diana Bishop who is used to being surrounded by unusual folks. He is the catalyst, of course. Things soon begin to move forward at a dizzying pace. This is a great edge- of- the- seat read, and the twists and turns are masterful! It's hard to put this one down.

Lucky for me I had " Shadow of Night," which is the second book of the trilogy at hand. In this book Harkess picks up right where she left off in "Discovery of Witches," and Diana and Matthew are soon whirling back through the threads of time. This becomes necessary because Diana has discovered that she is one of the most gifted of the Bishop witches. She has remained untaught and was in fact unable to control her powers due to an event that occurred before her parents died when she was seven years old. Much has changed in the world since their deaths, including Diane's view of magic. Her association with her soulmate, Matthew, is partly to blame for their flight into the past.

Knowing that they were returning to Matthew's own past life, this made the journey even more dangerous, and they had to be extremely careful not to make any changes that would affect the world we live in today. Much happens on this trip, and Diana meets many of those whose lives she has studied over the years.

This too is a fascinating story with a very surprising ending. It is a bit of a cliffhanger in fact. This makes perfect sense as the author wants to finish telling her tale. I know that I want to be one of the first in line to read "The book of Life" where all of the threads will be woven together as will the lives of the characters. I look forward to discovering what will happen next! If you haven't read these two books, I encourage you to do so, so that you will be ready for the final book and the conclusion of the series.

Anthony Doerr has written a wonderful story set in horrible situations during World War II in his new book, All the Light We Cannot See. With a blind French girl, an orphaned German boy, and a cursed jewel thrown in, the book is truly memorable and moving.

The characters are introduced in a brief first section dated "7 August 1944." The city of Saint Malo is being destroyed by bombs. Both protagonists are trapped there: Marie-Laure in her great-uncle's home and Werner in the hotel the German army commandeered. The second section of the book moves back to 1934 to begin the tale of how these two ended up in Saint Malo. By jumping back and forth in time from the 30's to the 40's, the book keeps the suspense growing. Within each section the author rotates chapters between the French story and the German one, moving it forward to the 1944 bombings.

Living in Paris, Marie-Laure is blind by the age of six. Her father built her a miniature model of the city so she could learn to navigate it by herself. The principal locksmith for the Museum of Natural History, her father arranges an official tour of the museum for Marie-Laure. There she hears the story of the diamond called the Sea of Flames. As big as a pigeon's egg and blue with a scarlet center, the jewel was supposedly cursed by the Goddess of the Earth so that anyone who keeps the gem will see his loved ones suffer unending misfortunes. According to rumors, the Sea of Flames is hidden under the strictest security, deep within the museum.

Werner and his little sister Jutta live in the Children's Home at Zollverein, a coal-mining complex outside of Essen, Germany. Their father died in the mines years ago leaving Werner determined to never, ever, enter a mine. An intelligent boy with a lively curiosity, Werner constantly asks questions and explores the world around him. At the age of eight, he repairs the orphanage's radio and becomes fascinated by all radios. Soon he is fixing them for people all over town. His reputation comes to the attention of a powerful and rich man who decides that Werner must attend a school where he can learn radio technology. Werner is thrilled, but Jutta is unhappy, and not only about being separated from her beloved brother. She is right to be frightened, because the school includes Nazi propaganda as part of the curriculum.

When the Nazis overrun Paris, Marie-Laure and her father escape by walking many miles to his uncle's home in Saint Malo on the coast of France. As the war turns against Germany, younger and younger men are drafted into the German army, including sixteen year old Werner. His knowledge of radios keeps him busy as his platoon tracks down Resistance fighters in France.

After her father is arrested, Marie-Laure starts to work for the Resistance Movement in Saint Malo. Before he was deported, her father built a miniature of that city so Marie-Laure can find her way around by herself. Not only are Werner and his platoon on her trail, but a German officer with orders to find treasures for the Reich is searching for her too. Because she and her father left Paris at the same time as the Sea of Flames seemed to have disappeared from the museum, this officer is certain that Marie-Laure can produce the jewel for him.

Doerr brings all the stories together like the pieces fitting into one of Werner's radio sets. His book is rich in details, the heroes are lovable, the plot is exciting, and his writing is beautiful. All the Light We Cannot See is a compelling work of fiction.

Reading in the storied lazy, hazy days of summer is always a pleasure, but in his third novel The Heart Broke In, British author James Meek has kicked it up a notch. In this gem he explores what it means to be good in a post-religious world where there are no set guidelines or parameters to behavior and the characters make it up as they go along. Centered around two families, the Shepherds and the Cowries, the novel has much in common with Thackeray's Vanity Fair albeit in a contemporary setting.

Rebecca Shepherd is a scientist searching for a cure for malaria. Building on research she started in New Guinea where she noticed that some of the indigenous people had a natural immunity, she spends months in Africa experimenting on Tanzanians as well as on herself. She names the parasite she hopes to use in honor of her father, Greg Shepherd, a British officer who has been murdered by the IRA for refusing to reveal the identity of an informant.

Her brother Ritchie Shepherd is an aging rock star currently producing a television reality show featuring teenagers. Ritchie's former drummer, Alex Cowrie, also a scientist, is following his Uncle Harry in studying ways to extend the human life span through cellular research. Harry is a medical geneticist who's spent 15 years researching a way to harvest "mutant expert cells, tweaking them genetically to toughen them, culturing them up by the million and then putting them back. He all but cured one type of cancer, then rested, and without realizing it, never stopped resting." Now Harry is dying and wants Alex surreptitiously to inject him with the cells to try to extend his life.

Meek's genius is setting these people and their problems out as if on a lab slide while he watches and conducts his own research into their various thoughts and behaviors as they react to the situations they've gotten themselves into. Bec's dilemma is that the children who are injected with the parasite still must be kept under mosquito netting until the immunity becomes effective and the caretakers cannot always be trusted to do that, leading in at least one case to a child's death. Those who do survive suffer the side effect of sudden blindness. "(She)'d looked hard for the roots of goodness holding up the world. She'd been ready to be supported and limited. She'd been ready for a moral foundation, but she hadn't found one. "

The author has a gift for finding (dark) humor in the absurdity of many of the situations.

Ritchie who lives in the land of fantastical thinking is a perfidious sleaze who cannot resist temptation even though he has a wife and children whom he loves. He asks himself if he is good and "... found it so easy to absolve himself of treachery that he was no longer conscious of the absolution." He hopes to redeem himself of his abhorrent behavior by producing a documentary on his heroic father. He wants to interview the man who murdered him, now released after twenty-five years in prison and supporting himself by giving poetry readings.

Skewering tabloid journalism and addressing topics of justice, atonement, jealousy, betrayal, narcissism, mental illness, family dynamics as well as love, honesty and courage, Meek shows an astounding depth and breadth of knowledge on many subjects. A major question he raises is "What happens when someone who sees himself 'as a part of the river of evolution going back billions of years' is faced with the finality of not being able to reproduce?"

Season of the Dragonflies: A Novel by Sarah Creech arrived this morning. Very timely, since I had just finished and closed the covers of the book I had been reading. I opened the package, and then the book. This one took a few chapters to draw me in, but once it had, I read until I was finished.

Magical realism and romance, great reading for a summer day, sitting in a rocker on the porch with my dog. The story of the Lenore family began in the late 1920's with a young woman named Serena and the man she fell in love with at first sight. Serena was eighteen years old the night she met Dr. Alex Danner.

Serena's father had made a match for her with a man named Chase, a man that she knew she could never love. She was feeling hopeless until her eyes met those of Alex, across the dinner table, the very night that her engagement was announced. Serena and Alex made their plans quietly, in secret and departed from the harbor in New York, on their way to Borneo, where Alex, Dr Danner was going to study the healing properties of plants.

Several years and two daughters later, Alex and Serena were coming back to the states. Taking one last walk before they departed what had become their home, the family came upon a circle of woman who seemed to participating in a sort of ritual around a plant, a flower that neither Serena, nor Alex had seen before. Serena felt compelled to enter the circle of women, and further, to enter the center of their circle. She reached out to touch the unusual flower, and it seemed to reach out to her, as well. The story goes, that she pulled the flowering plant from the earth, hid it in her hair, and carried it back to the United States.

Serena called her plant Gardenia potentiae, and it had the most beautiful fragrance of any flower she had ever seen. The family crossed the ocean to the states and the decided to settle in a small town in the Blue Ridge Mountains, a place called Quartz Hollow. I was here that she established her family, and created what was to become the business that sustained the entire town, for many years, and many generations to come.

Moving forward in time we meet Willow, Serena's granddaughter and Willow's two daughters, Mya and Lucia. Willow is the person in charge of the fragrance company that distilled what was considered to be one of the most intoxicating fragrances available anywhere. It seemed to have a magical quality that propelled the user to success in her chosen field. Mya worked with her mother, and Lucia had left the town to try her hand at acting. She seemed to have something to prove, to her family, and perhaps most of all to herself. This book Season of the Dragonflies is their story. The story of love, prosperity, magic and betrayal. It is a story of magic, death and mostly life and love.

Recommended for fans of Sarah Addison Allen, and anyone who likes a good story of several generations of strong and wise, or not so wise, women. I will look for more books by this author in the future.

Mark Twain wrote of his father, "When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around, but when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years." The same could be said about Kelly Corrigan and the theme of her third novel, Glitter and Glue, a memoir of her post-college trek to the land down under.

Readers of the New York Times bestseller A Middle Place already will be familiar with Corrigan's family. Her dad is the Radnor, Pa., lacrosse coach, her mother is a real estate agent and she has two brothers. Kelly is the only daughter and, while frequently at odds with her mother, is coddled and praised by her father. These relationships give rise to the title as her mother explains their conflicting child-rearing philosophies, "He's the glitter and I'm the glue."

Kelly begins to understand what her mother means, when just out of college, she and her friend, Tracy, take their savings and go half-way around the world to Australia in search of fun, adventure and guys in no particular order, preferably all at once. After two months of the good life, they find themselves at a hostel in Sydney and out of cash. Searching for jobs in bars, restaurants, surf shacks and burger joints, with zero results, in desperation they check the want ads in the newspapers for a position as nanny.

After a misstep or two, Kelly finally connects with a recent widower who has a seven-year-old daughter, Milly, and a five-year-old ball of energy, Martin. Martin and Kelly bond almost immediately, but Milly is more reserved. The father, John Tanner, is a steward for Qantas airlines and needs a live-in helper who can see to the needs of the children when he's on an overnight schedule.

As events unfold, two more individuals round out the family—the dead wife's grown son from her first marriage as well as the wife's father, neither of whom live in the house, but are nearby.

As Kelly manages to bring some order to the chaos in the house in the five months she is there, her mind constantly hears her mother's voice issuing edicts and homilies on how to raise children and how they should behave. It will come as no surprise to the reader that the longer Kelly is in the Tanner house, the wiser her mother becomes.

Corrigan writes with humor and compassion. I particularly liked her anecdote about working as a hat check girl at the Yang Ming restaurant one of my favorite restaurants to visit when I'm in Philadelphia. Glitter and Glue is a good book to read while sitting on the patio on a sunny afternoon and thinking about your own parents and family. She writes poignantly of the closeness that develops as they overcome some severe health issues, a topic she covered in her first two books.

Now married with two children of her own, she includes another anecdote to illustrate that the age-old generation gap still exists. "For the yearbook, the fifth-graders at Havens Elementary are asked to name the one person they most admire. Finley Swan said, "My mom!" So did that sweet Madeline Malan. My daughter put "Tom Brady.""

Beginning right where "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" left off, Ransom Riggs brings back Jacob and all of the children in the sequel "Hollow City." This is the second novel of the Miss Peregrine's series, and I think that I can safely promise you a third. Keep in mind that this is not a book for children, but a book that features children as its strongest characters. It is a great book for young adults, however. One of the most enjoyable and unique features of both books is that the story is written around many positively enthralling vintage photographs. There are more in book two, than we found in book one, and the way that they are used to create a story is simply genius. I would want to read both of these books for the photographs alone, as who doesn't enjoy looking at photographs from long ago. The people featured in these would most likely have been found in museum or circus side shows. They certainly would be described as peculiar. There are even more of these in "Hollow City" than there were in the first book, but they are all very interesting.

Jacob, Emma, Olivia, and the rest are on the run from their Island. They have brought along Miss Peregrine who has been magically bound in her black bird form. Their mission is not only to stay alive, but to find her some help. If she stays in this form for too long, she will be unable to change back to her human form. She is only one of many European caretakers of peculiar children, and the children realize that there are many others in jeopardy. Among their many problems, since this is all happening in a timeline from the past, are communication and transportation. It doesn't help that they had to flee with nothing but the clothes on their backs. What a dilemma! This book is a page turner for sure, as they swim, hike, and battle not only the elements, hunger, and nature itself, but of course the evil so called soldiers who want to capture them.

Be prepared to journey backwards and forwards in time. You will meet kindly gypsies and more peculiar children and adults as the group tries to save their beloved Miss Peregrine. The bombshell ending left me on the edge of my seat. I hope that even if these are not books that you would typically pick up, that you will give them a try, if only for the photographs. And I have more good news! Not only can we look forward to another book in the Miss Peregrine's series, but the author has a coffee table book coming out in October! Riggs describes this book on his blog as: "if Miss Peregrine was a story I made up about photographs I found, then "Talking Pictures" is photos that already have stories attached to them, written by anonymous hands years ago." That sounds good to me!

Books that delight are fairly rare things. There are many books that are educational, entertaining, engrossing, amusing, scary, intriguing, interesting, or hilarious, but truly delightful books are few and far between. Of course, what delights one reader may bore another. However, any reader who loves books will be delighted with The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, Gabrielle Zevin's eighth book and only her third one written for adults.

A.J. Fikry owns a bookstore. He and his wife opened Island Books in her hometown because both of them loved literature. And they felt that any town without a bookstore isn't much of a town. When they opened a "provider of fine literary content," they were very particular about what they would sell in their store. They refused to sell anything they didn't like. After his wife's tragic death in a car accident, A.J. continued that policy. A.J. doesn't like "postmodernism, post apocalyptic settings, post mortem narrators or magic realism." Nor does he like genre mash-ups, clever form devices, multiple fonts, or fiction about any major world tragedy. He is repulsed by ghost-written novels, celebrity picture books, sports memoirs, movie tie-ins, and naturally, vampires. Rarely does he stock debuts, chick lit, poetry, or children's books. He does like short story collections but admits no one ever buys them. A publisher's sales representative tells A.J., "this is a lovely store, but if you continue in this…backward way of thinking, there won't be an Island Books before too long."

A.J. had been extremely rude to that sales rep, mostly because she brought A.J. the news of the death of one of his few friends. The loss of his friend not only saddens him, but reminds A. J. of just how lonely he has been since his wife died years before. He spends yet another night in a drunken stupor, and on awakening finds the only truly valuable book that he owns is missing. Tamerlane, an extremely rare collection of poems by Edgar Allan Poe that A.J. bought at an estate sale, was worth more than his store's entire inventory. He was planning to auction it off and retire on the proceeds. Its loss is a catastrophe to A. J. Police Chief Lambraise and his team find no physical evidence at the scene. No book dealers or auction houses report any copies of Tamerlane turning up. Throughout the weeks of investigation, Lambraise and A.J. form a friendship that will last years.

For a few weeks following the robbery, Island Books experiences an upswing in business. After one of the busier days, A.J. finds a surprise at closing time. Someone left a baby in his store. Actually, she is a two-year-old who tells A.J. that her name is Maya. Her Elmo has a note attached to him with a safety pin. Maya's mother wrote that she wants Maya "to grow up in a place with books and among people who care about those things." Chief Lambraise has no more luck finding Maya's mother than he did finding Tamerlane. From here A.J.'s life changes completely.

In The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry every chapter is preceded with a description about some well-known short story. These comments and recommendations are written by A.J. to Maya, each reflecting on a part of his life. Reading about A.J.'s life, all his thoughts on literature, and all the people who love him and his store is a treat for readers who love books and literature. They will find A.J.'s story to be endearing, moving, and yes, delightful.

"Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands: A Novel" by Chris Bohjalian was as wonderful as I expected it to be. I never cease to be amazed by Bohjalian's ability to speak in any voice, any gender, and any time frame. He did not disappoint.

Emily Shepard is 16 years old, and she and her friends are at school midway through a normal day, or so they thought. What they at first think is an emergency evacuation drill turns out to be a real emergency when the nuclear power plant where both of Emily's parents work has a meltdown situation. Emily's father is responsible for the plant and its safe production of energy. Unfortunately, he and her mother both drink and have been seen inebriated in the past by friends and neighbors. The general consensus is that the event has been caused by the drunken carelessness of her father.

This is the situation she faces. Since they lived in what has become the exclusion zone, not only has she lost her home and most likely her dog, but her father is being blamed for these terrifying circumstances. When she realizes what is happening, she first tries to go home and save her dog, but is turned back again and again. She finally has to abandon the attempt and hope that someone else will rescue him. Determined to make her own way, she has fled from the evacuation of the students. From the moment she realized what was happening, she began to hear the murmurs of blame for her father. Finding it difficult to endure, she changes her name and tries to become as invisible as possible.

The book is about the months following the meltdown and the ways that Emily finds to survive. First completely alone and then meeting up with young people in similar and even worse situations than her own, she finds a strength and determination she never realized that she had. At one point she finds a young boy who has fled his foster family and is trying to live on the streets as she herself is doing. She takes him under her wing, and things become even more difficult. Emily is determined that they will both be safe and find a way to make a life. Of course, things do not always go as hoped or planned, as is evidenced by the meltdown itself. She is tested on many fronts, over and over again.

I felt like I couldn't read fast enough to learn how the story would end. This book is another hit for Bohjalian. His subject matter is always fresh, and the pace of his stories is perfect. For me 4 stars means the book was very difficult to put down, and this was a solid 4 star book.

I had no idea what to expect when I opened the pages of "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" written by Ransom Riggs. I did know that every single person I know who read it, loved it. Finally, I made time to sit down and start the journey.

Jacob Portman came from an affluent family, and he worked in the family business. To say that he wasn't happy with his situation would be an understatement. Jacob was however, very close to his paternal grandfather and always had been. From the time he was very young, Jacob listened to and was fascinated by the stories his grandfather told. The stories where sometimes accompanied by unusual and sometimes incredible photographs which you will find included in the book. The photographs are real vintage photos, and while this is absolutely not a graphic novel, the photos add a great deal to the story. They make an intriguing and fascinating addition.

Grandfather's stories were about a time before World War II when he lived in a home with several other children who were sent there to keep safe from the perils of the war. There were many children who were sent to strangers by their families during that time. But in the case of Miss Peregrine's home, things were far from usual. Many of his stories included references to monsters and children with unusual abilities. The photos convinced Jacob that the stories he heard were true. He always looked forward to the days when grandfather would pull out the box of photos and show them as he told the incredible tales.

As a young boy Jacob listened to the stories, believed them, and was frightened by them. As both Jacob and his grandfather grew older, there was less belief on Jacob's part. The fog that was encroaching on his grandfather's memory and thoughts made the stories seem impossible in fact. The dementia that his grandfather suffered from made Jacob more the caretaker than the child. One day while visiting, he found his grandfather in trouble, and what happened next would affect Jacob profoundly and change his life.

Jacob found something that he believed was a message from his grandfather, a message that was meant for him. He convinced his family that he needed to go to Wales where the home his grandfather spoke of was located and investigate the stories. For various reasons his father agreed to the trip and made plans for the two of them to go and find Miss Peregrine's Home. What they found there easily convinced Jacob that every single story was true. He finally had the proof that he sought. But now what? What will happen next? Was Jacob up for what was demanded of him?

I would give this novel four stars, as it is a great read. I hope you give it a try. And what makes it even better, the sequel is already out and waiting to be read! After finishing "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children," you will want to look for "Hollow City;" second novel to "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. "

The first thing you need to know about this book is that the author is in his own words "a livelong space nerd and devoted hobbyist of subjects like relativistic physics." Knowing that a friend of mine who is a physicist working for NASA feels that its science aspect is well done, I feel comfortable saying that this is a great book! "THE MARTIAN" by Andy Weir is classic science fiction and a thriller. It's a book that is difficult to put down. I had no choice but to read it in one sitting, because I simply couldn't wait to see how it ended. I suspect that you will feel much the same.

Mark Watney is a member of a team sent to Mars for research purposes. Each team member had more than one skill set, and Watney is an engineer and a botanist. Why send a botanist to Mars? Who better can assess the potential of sustainable life on that planet? As it turned out, that skill set saved his life. He was generally a cheerful, fun loving guy who was able to find humor is some pretty grim circumstances.

The mission was supposed to last thirty-one days on the surface of the planet. They had enough food, water, and air to last them nearly twice that amount of time. Even NASA likes to have just- in -case contingency plans. So when Watney was mortally wounded during a storm with incredible high winds and dust, his companions had no choice but to assume that he was dead. There was no communication from him and no information from his suit, He was seen blowing away by another team member. Under the circumstances, they decided to leave the surface and return to their craft.

It turns out that NASA did quite well with the just-in- case resources, because a kit meant to repair the suit came in handy, as did other supplies and back- up systems, except for the communication systems. There was no way for him to communicate with anyone on earth. But, not only was Watney alive, he meant to stay that way until the next mission arrived on Mars and he could hitch a ride home with them. But first things first, he had to find a means of communication. Despite the fact that there was plenty of food for a few extra days on the red planet, it wasn't nearly enough to keep him fed for years until the next landing. Let me tell you, if I ever find myself stranded on Mars or anywhere else, Whatney is the man I want to be stranded with. If you thought MacGyver had a bag of tricks, his was nothing compared to that of Mark Whatney. I promise that you will be astounded by his survival skills.

I don't want to spoil this for you, so all I can say is that you really need to read this book. It is as close to five stars as I have read this year. Don't be intimidated by its science fiction classification. It is as much a thriller and story of teamwork and friendship as it is science fiction.

Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday are two of the old West's most famous characters. Their friendship, their sharp shooting skills, and their loyalty to family are all legendary. The incident at the O.K. Corral with the Clanton and Earp gangs has inspired many story tellers. There have been numerous books, movies, and television shows based on their lives and that event. In his newest book, The Last Kind Words Saloon, Larry McMurtry, the author of more than thirty books, has created his version.

Usually Wyatt Earp is portrayed as the upright moral lawman devoted to his brothers and deeply in love with Jessie, his second wife. He was one of the men who cleaned up the Wild West, making it fit for womenfolk and families to live there. Doc Holliday is most often shown as Wyatt's best friend and loyal sidekick. A gambler at times, he was a good man, always ready to stand beside the Earps in all of their endeavors.

McMurtry's version of the two men is different. They are compatriots still, but the author changes quite a few things. The book begins in Long Grass, Texas, a settlement nearly in New Mexico. Wyatt, his brothers Virgil and Morgan, his wife Jessie, and Doc Holliday are living there, having already made Dodge and Abilene civilized places. Neither Doc nor Wyatt shoot very well; they can't hit a snake but probably could hit a buffalo. Wyatt says he subdued more men with a mean look than with his gun. His brothers are the ones actually employed as sheriff and deputy. Wyatt is just the strong arm. His relationship with Jessie is tense and quarrelsome. She often throws him out of the bar where she works. Both Wyatt and Doc are big drinkers and spend more time in the saloons than anywhere else.

To celebrate the formation of the largest cattle ranch in the West, Buffalo Bill Cody comes to Long Grass. For a short time Wyatt and Doc join Cody's Wild West show. Their engagement doesn't last long, due to their lack of gun fighting skills.

So they travel down to Mobitie, Texas and from there to Tombstone where Virgil and Morgan are hired as lawmen again. Wyatt is once more the law without any official position. Jessie finds another bartending position. Doc practices dentistry but really supports himself as a gambler.

Always known as a man of few words, here Wyatt is taciturn and withdrawn. Jessie complains to Doc that Wyatt never says a word. When she complains to Wyatt, he starts drinking at a saloon that does not employ her. When he finds how much time Jessie has spent talking with a man he dislikes, Wyatt punches her in the mouth, then slaps her face, then bursts into tears. This is not the Wyatt Earp seen in the movies. In this book the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral was not a showdown between the evil Clanton gang and the righteous Earps. The incident started when the Clantons drove a herd of cattle into town, raising so much dust that Wyatt's eggs became inedible. That made him angry enough to run out into the street and pick a fight with the head of the Clanton clan. That particular temper tantrum led to deaths in both families.

Larry McMurtry has been described as "our leading unsentimentalist" (by the 'Texas Monthly') while he continues "demystifying the West" (Tim Gautreaux, 'Washington Post'). Of this book McMurtry wrote that he kept in mind the movie director John Ford who "...said that when you had to choose between history and legend, print the legend. And so I've done." The Last Kind Words Saloon is less than two hundred pages, divided into five sections, each with short chapters. With his wonderful writing the Pulitzer Prize winning author packs a lot of story into those pages.

A journey that crisscrosses time and the sea is what you find between the pages of "The Rathbones" by Janice Clark. This is the story of a sea faring dynasty that is filled with both cruelty and wonder.

The tale is told by Mercy, a young woman of the Rathbone family. It is told as she herself discovers who her ancestors were and what they were. Not all of them gave her reasons to be proud of her name. Sons borne by women, many women fathered by ...well, that would be telling. But Mercy is a compelling and likeable character. We experiences her joys and her sorrows as she experiences them, and more importantly, we feel the magic

Mercy has a dim recollection of a golden brother with strong limbs and soft eyes who seems now to be only a dream.Her heart aches for him. Sadly, her questions go unanswered by her peculiar and solitary mother. Mercy's only other companions are two crows and Mordecai, a cousin who lives locked away in the attic and teaches her all she knows about history, whales, and navigation.

Whaling is what her family does, and they came to be the empire that was respected and perhaps hated along the coast of Connecticut. Their success came from their connection to the sperm whales, the very ones they killed in order for their family to grow and survive. The story is quirky, mysterious, and sometimes touched by magic. The tides of the sea seem to run through the veins of this family as they live and die by the water. Sailing comes naturally to them all, and in the end, it provides the answers to Mercy's past...and perhaps her future.

This was a good solid story, and one I am glad to have read. You will enjoy it too, if you like taking that half step outside the ordinary. And who doesn't? Recommended

I received a complimentary copy of "Autumn in Carthage" by Christopher Zenos . I was moved to request the book by its description and the mention of Salem and Danvers in Massachusetts. Having lived near Salem, I enjoy books that take place in that locale, no matter what year the story occurs.

This book exceeded my expectations. Nathan is a likable, main character. He is a bit quirky and a bit flawed, like so many of us. His journey from Chicago to Carthage, Wisconsin was a bit out of character for him, and he wondered if he would live to regret it. He was unable to resist the pull, however, as his trip was inspired by some intriguing information that he received about a friend of his who had been missing for some time.

In preparation for what was to be a sabbatical from the University of Chicago, Nathan received a package from a student with papers he had requested from the Peabody Museum in Salem. While looking over the papers, he came across an unlikely reference to his missing friend. Not feeling particularly hopeful of finding Jamie, he decided to go to the town of Carthage and investigate. Once in Carthage, a small and insular community, his plan was to work on a book and to investigate Jamie's disappearance.

Nathan checked into a small, quaint inn, where he was at first welcomed by Gerry, the inn's owner and chief cook and barkeep. It was during his first meal at the inn that he mentioned to Gerry and Alanna, one of the locals who happened to be nearby, his reason for choosing Carthage for a visit. He instantly felt the original welcoming atmosphere change. When he looked up into their faces, he was certain it wasn't his imagination. Little did he know that this was only the beginning.

As the days went by, not only did he find himself attracted to Alanna, but he felt that he had stumbled into something more mysterious than his friend's disappearance. It was something that could completely change his life, if he let it.

This was a terrific story, and I hope that there will be a sequel. I would love to experience more of the adventures of the inhabitants of Carthage.

What do you do when your dream job ends in unemployment and heartbreak? According to "The Last Enchantments," you pack up your life, leave your girlfriend in New York, and go to Oxford. And that is exactly what William Baker did.

William Baker grew up among the privileged. His family was older money. He had a slightly disturbing childhood, growing up with a stable mother and a drug addicted father whose family hid his problems with money. As a child he would dream up make-believe worlds to escape his young, sad life. After reading Holmes and C.S. Lewis, England became his dream world. And finally in England he had arrived.

England has never seemed like a magical place to me, but Charles Finch describes Oxford as if it were the Land Of Narnia. Everywhere you look, at an old building or a manicured garden, there was a magic of academia. There were bars at every college, dining halls built for kings, and punting on the river. Some of the best and brightest minds in the world, as well as some of the most powerful, had walked the lawns of Fleet, the college to which William belonged at Oxford.

If you ever have attended college, you know well the feeling of comfort that it provides. The world is not so scary on the grounds of a university. For a time everything is safe and happy in the land of learning. What is scary is the idea of what lays beyond. Will there be a job for me? Will love fit in the equation? Will I fit into the world? Will struggles with all these ideas. He wonders if there was even a point to getting a Master's Degree in English when his true love was politics. He wonders what will be left for him when he returns to the United States after his graduation. And, as we all do at some point, he questions whether or not he should even be there.

Charles Finch takes you on a ride with Will. You will feel his ups and downs, of which there are many. You start to question things right along with him. You love with him, and you mourn love lost with him. You meet exciting people who might remind you of ones you went to college with. Finch really has a way of writing that makes you feel like you are right there on the journey with William Baker and his friends. "The Last Enchantments" will leave you with a lasting impression.

First, I have to acknowledge that I am a life- long admirer of Harry Houdini. When I saw his name mentioned in the description of this book, I just couldn't resist. I was prepared to enjoy The Confabulist, and I did. It was however, not quite what I expected it to be.

Many of us are fairly familiar with Harry Houdini who was first known by his family name of Weiss, Ehrich Weiss. He came from a family of immigrants and grew up to be one of the world's greatest illusionists. With his brother Dash at his side, he began his career as a magician in sideshows on Coney Island. It was while performing with Dash that he met his future wife, Bess, who spent many years working as his assistant. However, Bess remains well in the background of this story. The Confabulist goes into some detail about how some of his stunts and illusions were performed. Those of us who still believe in magic may decide to believe it, or not.

With the story being related narration style, this book covers a great deal of historical ground. The narrator is Martin Strauss who more or less begins by confessing to having been the one to cause Houdini's death. That this is an alternate history was what I found surprising and intriguing. Intermingled with the storyline of Houdini's life, is the rather convoluted and occasionally confusing tale of Mr. Strauss himself who receives an unlikely and disturbing report on his own health in the beginning of the book. We are carried back and forth in time and between the lives of these two men. Their connection is revealed slowly and with enough detail to inform, but not so much that it becomes tedious.

Included, although not in nearly the detail that I would have expected, is his crusade against Spiritualists and Mediums who professed to be able to contact those who have crossed to the other side. Many sources portray Houdini as conflicted about this, both wanting to find a true connection with his mother who died and wanting to expose those who were nothing more than frauds. In fact, this became something of an obsession of his, according to many sources. We are also led to believe, in this version of the illusionist's life, that he did work for the United States government.

The ending of Galloway's version of the story was not at all what I expected, but well worth the journey to get there. I'm not sure whether to recommend this book to fans of magicians, alternate history, or mysteries. I think that fans of all of the above genres will enjoy its mix of real characters and imaginary ones.

The author of The Confabulist also wrote The Cellist of Sarajevo chosen as one of the Washington Post's Best Books of 2008.

To title a book The Enchanted suggests that it is about elves and wizards with a setting in a magical kingdom and science fiction or fairy tales as the genre. Instead, author Rene Denfeld set her novel The Enchanted in a state penitentiary with inmates, guards, the warden, a fallen priest, and an investigator for characters. The description of prison life fills the book with a gritty realism that takes it far out of the fairy tale genre.

The narrator describes in detail his death row cell with its stoned walls and no windows. When the river beside the prison floods its banks, all the cells on the row fill with water. The meals the prisoners are given in their cells are made from food that grocery stores have thrown away and have been rejected by soup kitchens. Usually, it is hard to tell exactly what the food is.

The visiting room for death row is small with a cage to hold the inmate during the professional visits. The lawyers think their clients want to see them, but the real reason the inmates go is to see out the window in that room. Once their visit is done, the inmate is returned to his cell with no window, no fresh air, a flat cot, and an open toilet. They can tell the other inmates about that scrap of sky they saw while in the visitor's room. No inmate ever lies about that.

The prisoners are criminals of the worst sort. "In the books, the baby killers and rapists are hated in prison. That is not the truth...You can be the worst baby killer or rapist and still beat and rape your way to power inside," according to the narrator.

This prison is a corrupt one. Though the warden is a good man, one guard in particular, Conroy, is crooked. Conroy runs a drug ring within the prison, bullies the inmates and guards alike, and even arranges to have an inmate kill a guard. In one heart-breaking situation Conroy uses a teen-aged inmate as a reward for a pedophile informant. The warden seems totally unaware, perhaps because he is absorbed by his wife's battle with cancer.

Super-imposed on all this misery is the story of the fallen priest and the lady. Neither character is ever named. The priest left the church but still serves at the prison. The lady is a death penalty investigator. She has been hired by the lawyers to find evidence to stay the execution. The inmate, however, does not want her help. In fact, he asked for all appeals to stop and for his execution to proceed. It is the first time the lady has worked for someone who does not want to live. Without his co-operation the lady looks into the inmate's background, a sad childhood that is eerily similar to her own past. As the fallen priest and the lady work together to try to save this inmate, they help each other. They slowly learn to accept themselves and their feelings for each other.

As grim as the setting is and as devastating as the inmates' stories are, The Enchanted is a beautiful and wondrous book. Rene Denfeld wrote three previous books of nonfiction and is a death penalty investigator herself. Her experience shows in this her first novel. When starting to read this book, be sure to have some time free. It is riveting, spellbinding, and nearly impossible to put down.

Losing a sibling is tragic at any age. Being raised by a single parent of the opposite sex can be difficult for children. These combined hardships are part of the lives of the main characters in two books written for teens, Sure Signs of Crazy and Coaltown Jesus. Both of the teen-aged protagonists do find help, but in quite different places.

Walker, in Coaltown Jesus by Ron Koertge, lives with his mother in the nursing home that she manages. His father died years ago. His brother died recently, and his mother hasn't stopped crying. One evening Walker looks up at the sky and asks, "…if you are up there, help my mom, okay?" When he goes back inside, he finds Jesus standing in his bedroom. Though he is wearing robes and has the traditional look, Jesus is not the usual Messiah figure. He emails, likes Dairy Queen, and plays basketball. He and Walker develop a joking and teasing kind of relationship. His views on the Bible are rather irreverent. The whole damnation business gives God a bad name, according to Jesus. Also, the Gospel of Mary should have been included in the Bible since Mary had a wicked sense of humor. But Jesus is all-knowing and merciful. When Walker and he visit the nursing home's patients, Jesus tells Walker what to say to make each resident feel better. Most importantly to Walker, Jesus leads him to reconnect with his mother, which helps her as well as Walker. The message that love is everything is loud and clear. Writing in free verse, Ron Koertge humanizes Jesus while taking on some of life's biggest questions.

In Sure Signs of Crazy by Karen Harrington, Sarah Nelson lost her twin ten years ago when their mother filled the kitchen sink and tried to drown them both. Sarah managed to survive, her brother wasn't as lucky. Although her mother isn't dead, she may as well be since she's in a mental hospital that Sarah never visits. After her mother's trial and conviction her father was put on trial for child endangerment. In spite of the not guilty verdict, the extensive news coverage never stopped. Sarah's life is a series of moves as her father tries to avoid the continuing harassment by the press. A college professor, her father deals with the pain in his life by numbing it with alcohol. Sarah may not know her parents, but she knows the best cure for a hangover. Because of her need to keep her past a secret, Sarah won't allow herself to become close to any friends. Her fear of ending up like her mother makes Sarah constantly monitor her own behavior for signs of insanity.

Her English teacher gave Sarah's class the assignment of writing a real letter, not an email or a text, but an actual letter to anyone they chose. Fictional characters were acceptable since the lesson was on writing and no replies were expected. While most of the class wrote to Harry Potter, Sarah chose to write to Atticus Finch, the father in To Kill a Mockingbird. She enjoyed the assignment so much that she continues writing to Atticus through summer vacation. Expressing her feelings and putting down all of her problems on paper helps Sarah to know what she truly thinks. Eventually, she discovers a way to get the help she needs.

Both books take sad situations and have the characters find their way to a better place. Both use humor in their warm-hearted stories of growing up. Both books are worthwhile reading for adults as well as teens.

The Plover: A Novel by Brian Doyle is a story as deep as the ocean and just as vast. Declan is a dreamer who is undeniably filled with both wisdom and whimsy. Off he sails on the Plover, headed west, west, west. He is going to sail alone and be alone and dream and observe and then, life begins to happen to him.

Declan's solo voyage becomes a bit crowded. He is joined by a somewhat motley crew. They all begin to rely upon one another in order to become a family. Their story is improbable, not impossible! But surely it must be true, because no one can make up characters like these. A novel it is!

Brian Doyle has written what amounts to be a masterpiece for those of us who read for the friendship of the characters, the love of the people within the pages. If I don't care about the characters in a book, I don't like the book. What's the point of it, I think? And even though I love the characters here, I strive to find the reason, the what is it and why of it?

Declan, Pico, Pipa...what kind of story are you in? Is this a story of the life of Declan? Is it a tale of life at sea? I don't think it is a mystery, but it is certainly mysterious at times. There is a soft spirituality in this tale and a grim darkness as well. Wait! I think that's it. This is an allegory of life, it's not about life, it IS life. That is my take on this story.

We are all in life alone, but not really. We face our ups and downs, our moments of brilliant light, and fathomless darkness. We need no one but ourselves, and of course all of the others. For me, that is what this story represents. For you? Who knows. But I know this, you NEED to read this book. I think that it is one of those magical, mystical, marvelous stories that has a different meaning for us all. I will certainly be looking by more books written by Brian Doyle, and soon. This one is highly recommended for all.

Separation of Church and State by Joseph Max Lewis is not an easy book to classify. To call it Christian Fiction doesn't do it justice, because although it might be that, it is a Political Thriller that can be compared to books by some very well- known authors. I would describe his work as similar to that by David Baldacci, Vince Flynn, and Tom Clancy. All of these authors and more have, over time, made it to my must read list. Now, I will be adding Joseph Max Lewis to that list as well.

Lewis' Amazon bio begins by saying that "Joseph Max Lewis served as a member of an Operational Detachment in the U.S. Army's Seventh Special Forces Group, the storied Green Berets". That and his other experiences and achievements have certainly added to his ability to write a gripping story. I promise you, when you read any of his books, that is what you will be getting, a nail biter, a gripping, edge- of- the -seat story.

Some people avoid Political Fiction which is a shame. In my opinion there are few things as entertaining as shenanigans in our country's Capitol. Sometimes readers find it difficult to put aside their own politics and opinions and just enjoy the ride. I hope this isn't the case with those of you reading this review, because you will be depriving yourself of a great read. The fact that Joseph Max Lewis is a local author who uses our own region and familiar locales adds to an already wonderful story.

Protagonist Tim Lewis is a journalist for a well- known news network. He landed a one- time shot at anchoring a popular inside the Beltway news program when the regular host was out with the flu. A last minute snag occurred when an expected guest had to bow out to illness as well. Lewis tapped Cardinal Guzzetti, a well- known figure and member of the Catholic church, to step in and round out his panel. He did this without realizing that Guzzetti was "persona non grata" in that particular news agency. He would come to regret his invitation even before the program was finished. In fact, it was altogether possible that he would pay for that invitation with his life.

Unfortunately for Lewis, his boss is a member of a murderous brotherhood called the Society of Human Enlightenment, a group that at the very time the program was airing, was plotting to assassinate a Supreme Court Justice. This plot was one of the steps the Society was prepared to take to achieve its own deadly, hate- filled agenda.

What follows in the hours and days after the airing of the show that Lewis thought was going to bring him to the attention of his boss and perhaps give a boost to his career, is fast- paced ,exciting and leads us with great anticipation to an unexpected ending that will leave the reader wanting more!

In this world of social media, of immediate gratification, and Facetime, individuality, and hoarding, it is hard to consider a time when sacrifice reigned supreme. A time when fathers and brothers bravely signed their lives to the service of their country, when women worked in factories, and children gave their tin toys up to become tanks.

There was a time that today will never know, that now will never understand. Despite our inability to empathize, we are fortunate for those that canonized. The soldiers of yesterday were scholars, were farm hands, were barbers, and were poets. They forever eulogized a generation.

"Most soldier-poets - like most soldiers - believed the War to be necessary, but wanted the costs acknowledged and the truths told" (Kendall). The truths these poets told were truths that no one else would ever understand. Richard Aldington noted that, "there are two types of men, those who have been to the front and those who haven't." These men had a ken beyond the reach of civilians, but they also reached out to civilians. They used their fierce patriotism and their poetic talent to write to their loved ones - pieces of beauty amongst the omniscient atrocity.

Poems were sorrows, were testaments of love, loss, and hope. Poems were moments in time that are solidified into eternity and give a glimpse into the depths of the human experience that we may never experience.

Kendall has collected these moments, written on bloodied pages, and comprised them into one collection. Poems are organized by author, allowing the reader to view the War from one man's eyes at a time, capturing entire experiences, rather than one subject at a time.

Each piece is supplemented by informative footnotes. These give context that offer insight to why each poem was written and the social impact that it had. Some pieces were love stories to a country, were odes to a fallen comrade, or odes to a fallen enemy. There were pieces of frustration, loyalty, and sheer wonder at the capabilities of man. But each piece is a moment, a synecdoche of a generation.

It is important to remember the past in order to create a brighter future. It is important to know our predecessors to unify as a people. It is important to recognize the significance of art to a culture. "Poetry of the First World War" is an opportunity to indulge of each of these responsibilities.

"They shall grow not old, as we that are left to grow old/Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn./At the going down of the sun and in the morning/We will remember them." - "For the Fallen", Laurence Binyon

It seems as though just about any book that is set in the South with a preteen girl as one of the main characters will be compared to To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize winner. With this standard of excellence being used, it is a wonder that any author has the courage to place a young female protagonist in that setting. Wiley Cash did just that in This Dark Road to Mercy, his newest novel. However, the differences between the two books are pretty significant. As author Jess Walter described it, This Dark Road to Mercy is "Harper Lee by way of Elmore Leonard." It is certainly more modern, taking place during the summer of the McGwire-Sosa homerun record derby. Cash's heroine, Easter, does not have an older brother to help her. She has a younger sister, Ruby, who relies on Easter. Their mother died recently of a drug overdose, which made for the heartbreaking scene of Easter finding her body. Their father is not the wise and admirable Atticus. Instead, Easter and Ruby have Wade, an exconvict who signed away his parental rights years ago. But like Atticus, Wade does love his children very much.

Without any next of kin nearby, the two girls are placed into foster care. Their maternal grandparents who live in Alaska are trying to get through all the legal hoopla to claim custody. This is taking quite some time, but Easter and Ruby are in no hurry to move in with the grandparents they hardly know. Their mother left Alaska in her teens and had nothing good to say about her home state. So when Wade crawls through their bedroom window at their foster home to talk the girls into leaving with him, Easter decides it is the safe thing to do.

Once on the road Easter reconsiders that choice. They have the law looking for them. After all, Wade has no legal claim to the girls, even though he is their father. Technically, he is kidnapping them. The court appointed Brady Weller to be the girls' legal advocate. When he hears they have disappeared from their foster home, Brady takes up the chase too. And then there is Robert Pruitt, a former baseball player who played in the minors with Wade. He blames Wade for his baseball career coming to an early end. When he gets wind of Wade being on the road, Pruitt is on their trail also.

Told by Easter, Brady, and Pruitt in rotation, the story of this road trip makes for quite an adventure. Eventually, Wade decides to take his daughters to St. Louis to see Mark McGwire hit a home run. As they travel, Easter begins to forgive Wade for his earlier desertion, creating some touching scenes. As Pruitt closes in, the story grows as suspenseful as any thriller. As Brady tries to rescue the girls and do the right thing for them, the story has some thoughtful parts.

Best-selling author Christopher Moore wrote about This Dark Road to Mercy: "A 'little Southern girl' meets both creepy and loveable ne'er-do-wells. One of the best books I've read in the past year." Now, just because Christopher Moore writes good books doesn't mean that he reads good books. And who knows what else he has read in the past year? But he is right about this: This Dark Road to Mercy is one of the best.

In her first novel, Loving Frank, Nancy Horan tells the story of the complex relationship of architect Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Borthwick Cheney. In this novel, Under the Wide and Starry Sky, based on the lives of Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Osborne, she continues in this vein. The theme of both novels depicts how these women defied society's conventions to be with the men they loved. The title of the book originates from the poem, Requiem, written by Stevenson.

This second novel is an intimate portrait of the lives of Fanny and Louis, as she calls him. Based on actual facts there is much emphasis on the effect Fanny has on Louis's life, personally, medically, and creatively.

Their life together begins with their meeting at Genz. Louis goes there to meet his bohemian friends. There he meets Fanny, 10 years his senior, and is almost instantly smitten. Fanny, who is there to paint and escape the unimaginable loss of her young son and her marriage to a philandering husband, is much more reticent.

Eventually, she and Louis do fall in love and live together for a time. Fanny decides to give her marriage another chance, although she loves Louis. She returns to America, and much to her dismay she finds her husband has not changed.

Louis, determined to win Fanny back, travels on a tramp steamer despite his chronic illness. He arrives in America, his health broken by the arduous journey, near death. Eventually, he reunites with Fanny who had also been very ill. Fanny is now divorced, and she and Louis are finally married.

So begins their nomadic existence. This marriage of opposites is full of love, inspiration, and eventual loss. Fanny subverts her own creative existence to help her husband's creativity. Often she nurses him back from his many close calls with death. Despite the hardships of Victorian Age travel, they go from place to place searching for where Louis can regain his health, live more comfortably, and continue to write. Their search takes them from America, Switzerland, England, Australia, and finally to Samoa. Through much of their travels they are on a boat, and Fanny, who has terrible bouts of seasickness, is violently ill.

In Samoa Louis seems to be happy and leads a most fulfilling life. He begins a frenzy of creativity often working long hours. Fanny, who herself wanted to be a writer, is often relegated to nursemaid. She is instrumental in his success as she reads and critiques his writing and often gets him to make changes.

In the recently published novel, Starter House by Sonja Condit, Lacey and Eric Miszlak are house hunting. The couple has a limited budget and very strict criteria for the woman showing them available homes. After showing them many homes in the specified area, they accidentally end up with their realtor in front of a home that is clearly undergoing renovations. Lacey has fallen in love with the place and is sure that this is where her family will live and grow, but Eric isn't so sure. He has no time, no energy, and no money for a fixer- upper.

The owner of the home happens to live next door. He is a seemingly nice man, but he seems very anxious to sell. Even though their agent tries to discourage them, all she will say is that people died in that home. Lacey rationalizes that people die everywhere, and any house that has been standing for a while probably has had a death. When an offer that they really can't refuse comes from the seller along with a handy excuse regarding why he is willing to let it go so cheaply, the deal is sealed. Before the Miszlaks are even moved in, the house begins to affect the young couple. To be more specific, Drew, a child on a bike, appears. He does actually appear, but only Lacey sees him. It takes her a while to realize that she is the only one who sees him. From her first contact with the boy, things begin to go wrong. This is especially frightening, because Lacey is pregnant with their first child.

She begins to investigate the history of the home and finds that there have indeed been deaths there. Not only have children died, but families have been torn apart. Eric becomes concerned when Lacy continues to insist that she sees a ghost, one that appears to her not just in the home but in other places as well. The tempermental Drew is able to do more than just appear. He causes damage to the home and is threatening toward Lacey. Eric becomes increasingly concerned and irritated with his wife. He calls in his flakey mother-in-law, Ella Dane, to help him watch over his wife. She arrives with her little dog and is prepared to do spiritual cleansing and watch over her daughter. Problems only increase.

This is a good solid read which is not too spooky, but just about right for those who enjoy a light read.

Books have a tendency to follow a person, as if the characters' experiences actually belonged to the reader. This phenomenon trickles into motives, beliefs, and thoughts. Books are how recluses can become public figures, the frightened become knights in shining armor, and anyone can find their way into Andrew's brain.

Renowned author E.L. Doctorow has crafted another masterpiece, though on the scale nearly that of a short story. Known for his historical and political pieces, Doctorow has taken us to the head of the present man in "Andrew's Brain."

With a limited cast of characters, Doctorow explores questions of humanity from the inside out. The entire book is a running inner dialogue from Andrew, occasionally with brief interjections by an apparent psychoanalyst.

Andrew lives the life of one of Rosten's schlemiel - a man plagued by bad luck at the expense of others. At the time of his dialogue, he has caused the death of four individuals, including a wife and two daughters. A cognitive scientist, Andrew tackles the emotions of his mind with the science of his brain.

The danger of this piece is that it can be taken as the superficial drivel of a man with too many college degrees. But in classic Doctorowian style, he invites the reader to explore between the lines to discover, hypothesize, and assume.

In his soliloquy, Andrew leads the uninvited reader through strange experiences that are as tragic as the death of each person he's chosen to love, as odd as working for George W. Bush out of a converted broom closet in the White House basement, and as unexpected as meeting the dwarf family of Andrew's second love.

Doctorow has provided the catalyst for the deep thoughts of the reader, but in a manner that allows enough space between the lines for conversation with the characters. In this way, the reader is able to jump into the head of Andrew, join his query of the difference between mind and brain, and walk away from a story with questions.

When a novel is well written, readers and characters build relationships. Each seeks more from the other and neither can truly be known. Novels provide questions and room for the imagination to elucidate. These are the questions that are asked generation after generation and connect today's readers to those in the 19th century.

Charles Dickens, one of the great authors of our times, provided us with beautifully complex characters and an opportunity to get lost in a world today's readers could not otherwise know. Such is the world of Miss Havisham.

A spinoff, "Havisham" by Ronald Frame, is one man's interpretation of what made Miss Havisham into the character that haunts the pages of Dickens. Frame provided a past for who readers only knew to have a present.

Dubbed Catherine, the young Miss Havisham lived a childhood that we now know was full of learning, expectations, and scandals. Sent from her father's brewing company to a well-to-do family to learn to be a lady, Charlotte found herself amidst classic novels, masquerades, and constant lessons.

This is the world into which she was pushed, but was never fully accepted. This is the world where she could escape her sadistic half brother. This is the world where she met the young man who would inspire the infamous Havisham craze.

Worlds collide within "Havisham," but the largest collisions take place without of the book. Though an admittedly creative venture, "Havisham" does not meet the expectations of a "Great Expecations" spinoff.

The scale of the book is far more surmountable than that of "Great Expectations," but is so at great sacrifice. Gaps exist in the narrative where elucidation should occur and finalities are hastily met.

Though enjoyable to meet familiar characters in a different context, Frame's and Dickens' writings are so vastly different that being reintroduced results in meeting characters that aren't true to their original selves.

When approached as a separate entity from "Great Expectations," the reader finds an enjoyable read in "Havisham." Dialogue largely carries a flowing narrative that creates for an opportunity to spend an afternoon in an 1800s world of dances, betrayals, and lost love.

'Neglected children' is a popular theme in books these days. Perhaps it is a sign of the times, but children whose parents, for one reason or another, ignore or abuse them are characters in many novels and memoirs. Whether the cause is their own bad upbringing, their addictions to any of a variety of substances, or plain narcissism, these parents' behavior evoke disgust, anger, or sometimes, pity. However, the father in The Impossible Knife of Memory by Laurie Halse Anderson deserves gratitude, even admiration. Andy Kincain is a war veteran who served several tours of duty in the Middle East and has a bad case of post traumatic stress disorder. He is a single father who wants to do right by his teen-age daughter, but the ugly thoughts in his head get in the way. So PTSD affects not only Andy, but life for Hayley too. Any father can have a tough time raising a teenager. In Andy's case, there are times when it is Hayley who is doing the parenting.

When Andy failed to hold a steady job, he took to life on the road as a truck driver. Hayley went along, with Andy doing the homeschooling. That her education consisted of games and quizzes in the cab of a big rig bothered no one. Then Andy's attacks grew worse. It was as if all he could see, hear, and feel were scenes from the war. So he suggested that he quit driving and they settle into a 'normal life' where Hayley could go to a regular school for her senior year. Hayley agreed, because she thought this would make life better for her dad. But she was secretly and completely terrified by the thought of high school. They moved back to the town where Andy grew up, and Hayley enrolled in the public school.

Because of her unusual lifestyle, Hayley had no real friends or even any prolonged interaction with people her own age. She feels socially clueless. A girl in the neighborhood, Gracie, takes Hayley under her wing before school starts. At least Hayley has one familiar face in the halls and someone to sit with at lunch. She can't seem to stay out of trouble, though.

Hayley dozes in classes, corrects her teachers, and racks up detention time, eleven times in twenty-four days of school. Like most people in a new situation, Hayley doesn't understand all the unwritten rules of life here. When she becomes attracted to Finn, Hayley is even more confused. He seems to like her, so is it okay to call him? Should she stop at his locker? She doesn't know what to do. Gracie's no help since she is submerged in her family's drama. Her father moved out, and Gracie's mom isn't coping. Hayley's father is in no shape to answer questions. He doesn't want to talk, eat, or do anything but sit in front of the television. Gradually he grows even worse, using both alcohol and drugs to get through a day. Hayley becomes afraid to leave him alone and starts missing more and more school. Finn tells Hayley, "You take care of him more than he takes care of you."

A gripping and suspenseful occurrence brings the situation to a satisfying conclusion. Though Laurie Halse Anderson writes for teen readers, she has dealt with such serious problems as date rape and eating disorders. In this book she writes effectively about PTSD, a problem that isn't going to go away. With pages of Andy's thoughts interspersed throughout, the book shows how badly the disease affects the minds of its victims. The Impossible Knife of Memory gives insight and understanding to people who have PTSD and the members of their families who suffer with them.

"The Lost Girls of Rome" is a thrilling murder mystery that takes place in Rome. A young widow, who works as a forensic photographer, is grieving the loss of her husband. He died just months earlier in a freak accident while on assignment as a photojournalist. A phone call to Sandra, the widow, late one night reveals that maybe David's death had not been an accident at all-it was murder.

Sandra begins a chase that takes her from Milan to Rome. A series of clues left by her dead husband will guide her from historic location to location, revealing the secrets of an age-old sect of priests. These men work under the guise of the Vatican, but in truth were banned from their positions years earlier. It is during this time that we are introduced to Marcus, a penitenziere, a member of the secret group. This group is so exclusive that the members don't even know who the others are, or even if there are any. Marcus is suffering from amnesia as a result of a traumatic injury. The truth behind this injury unravels as the book progresses. Is Marcus really who they say he is? He is on a mission to find out.

During Sandra's travels to Rome, a serial killer is uncovered. He is to blame for the death of at least four women, and another one is missing. Marcus has been charged with finding her. Sandra is in danger, having been shot at in a chapel where a clue was hidden. Sandra meets a handsome Interpol officer, the one who leads her to believe her husband was murdered. He is handsome with a slight German accent. He insists that Sandra give him any information that she may have, and in turn Sandra insists that they work together to solve David's murder. The one problem that Sandra doesn't know is that Schalber, the Interpol officer, had disappeared a year ago. Who really was this man?

In the meantime, you are introduced to someone called "The Hunter." His identity is never revealed and neither is the name of his "prey." He travels around the world looking for something called the "transformist." His travels take him to Mexico, France, Canada, Vienna, and Prypiat (the town next to the ill-fated Chernobyl Nuclear facility). His prey was a serial killer, leaving faceless bodies all over the world.

Donato Carrisi brilliantly works the story lines behind all these characters into one novel. Every twist and turn neatly brings the story into focus. Carrisi will bring you to the edge of your seat, wondering what will happen next. You will not be able to set this book down until it is finished and all your questions are answered.

Still Life with Bread Crumbs, a novel by Anna Quindlen, is a beautifully written story about the unwinding of a woman's life. Rebecca was an only child. She married and became the mother of an only child. She made a good living for a fairly long time as a photographer, but that nearly happened by accident. It seemed that not many things happened in Rebecca's life, but the best things and the most important things were accidental.

At a point in her life when Rebecca began to feel that her life as an artist was waning, she decided to take some time for herself. She found and rented, sight unseen, a small cabin outside of a small town in a remote but lovely area. She expected to spend a year alone, secluded with her thoughts and her camera. She never expected this experience to change her life in every possible way.

Rebecca's necessary trips into town for supplies introduced her to the locals, and to her surprise they became friends. There was a special closeness that they offered to each other and extended to Rebecca. She began to enjoy her trips to town more and more. She also began to hike the woods and find opportunities to photograph the sorts of found art that had once made her so renowned. Rebecca began to hope that she might once again make a living for herself with her camera. Little did she know that this found art would help to create a connection for her that she never again expected to have in her life.

During her sojourn she still had the responsibilities of her aging parents, and seeing to their care took her back to the city to visit with them and see to their needs. While she loved them, she was always anxious to return to her small cabin in the woods and the life she was creating there.

This book was so filled with hope and joy and feelings that sometimes, some of us who have reached a certain age, feel will never be part of our lives again. It is a strong reminder that grown children and changes in a way of life can bring us to a time of contentment and pleasure that we thought we had left behind.

I always knew that all good things had to come to an end, but it never occurred to me that an ending would become a good thing and not an ending after all. Perhaps it is true that each ending is nothing but a new beginning in disguise. Anna Quindlan never lets me down. This book draws the reader in and gives pleasure, just as all of Quindlan's books have done for years.

Written by J.K. Rowling, author of the beloved Harry Potter series, under the pseudonym of Robert Galbraith, "The Cuckoo's Calling" suffers being judged by many of its readers not for its content, but for its author.

Readers are shamefully spending more time noting the differences between "The Cuckoo's Calling" and Harry Potter, rather than engrossing themselves in Rowling's first attempt at mystery literature.

With all of the whodunit of Gillian Flynn and all of the gritty realism of Rowling's "Casual Vacancy," "The Cuckoo's Calling" exhibits the Rowling's laudable knack for characterization. She creates personalities that you can sometimes love and sometimes hate, but that you can always believe exist.

These characters function within beautifully parodic pages: a burly has-been PI, accompanied by his smart, beautiful assistant track down the killer of the world's favorite supermodel. Our protagonist faces his past while chasing the present down winding trails of lies, evidence, and intuition. The narrative is given a soundtrack of jackhammers and flashbulbs and screams and the stage is set with all of the damp streets, drawn blinds, and tense conversations of a film noir.

To read "The Cuckoo's Calling" was to be a part of a classic tale of motive, mystery, and murder. It joined the worlds of the celebrity and of the layman in a way that anyone could relate to. It kept the reader guessing, no matter how sure they were of who committed the crime. It made the reader want to read more about characters with "face[s] the colour of corned beef" being chased by "long-snouted cameras." It combined all of Rowling's ability to paint a picture, to create a person, to engage a reader with her desire to discover new genres of her writing.

"The Cuckoo's Calling" was no Harry Potter saga, it was no "Casual Vacancy," and for that, Rowling is to be kudized. It is an entity in and of itself that deserves as much recognition as the exposure of its author. Set Potter aside and give Cormoran Strike the chance to draw you in.

When the wind is howling and the temperature dips into the single digits, few things are more satisfying than settling in with a good book and a warm beverage. When the book is about a walk through the English countryside in the spring when the flowers are just emerging, the satisfaction level rises accordingly.

Such was the case with The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by first-time novelist Rachel Joyce.

Harold has recently retired from a desk job at a brewery and lives with his wife Maureen in Kingsbridge, a village in the south of England. In the first few pages we see that Harold is ill-equipped for retirement and irritates Maureen as his presence interrupts her routine. One day, after he rests from mowing their small yard, he receives a letter from someone he worked closely with many years ago. The someone is a woman, Queenie Hennessey, and she writes that she is in a hospice dying of cancer and wants Harold to know that she has been thinking of him. Harold is nonplussed and sets about penning a note in return. After several false starts he finally is satisfied with his effort and strides off to post the letter to the hospice in Berwick on Tweed in Scotland. As he passes post box after post box, he can't seem to part with the letter. He keeps telling himself he'll just walk to the next one.

At the edge of town he stops for a snack and tells the young girl at the counter about his friend who is dying. The girl replies that her aunt had cancer, but it is important to stay positive. "You have to believe. That's what I think. It's not about medicine and all that stuff. There is so much in the human mind that we don't understand. But..if you have faith, you can do anything."

Thus the seed was planted. Harold ponders her simple statement and decides that he is going to walk to the hospice to deliver his letter. He tells the nun at the hospice to tell Queenie to hold on until he gets there. So this unlikely knight, wearing his light windbreaker and yachting shoes, sets off on the six-hundred-mile quest to bring hope to an old friend. (A comparable feat would be walking from Beaver County to the Poconos and back.) When he phones to tell Maureen what he's going to do, she scoffs and says, "I'd like to see you get past Dartmoor."

Along the way, of course, things do not go smoothly. Harold has a lot of trouble with blisters-he ends up wrapping his feet in blue duct tape-but he meets many interesting people and he also has time to think, to ponder the direction his life has taken and to confront ghosts that have haunted him. At home, Maureen also reevaluates what her life has become.

Ms. Joyce's background spans more than twenty years playing leading roles in the English theater as well as writing plays for the BBC. This experience shows in her creation of Harold and Maureen. Other characters seem as familiar as those on the Saturday evening PBS shows. Ms. Joyce includes a great deal of typical British humor, and she delights in skewering the types of people who leech on to any kind of celebrity. The novel isn't perfect; she has a tendency to repeat a bit much. Perhaps a TV writer must do that to keep an audience focused.

She does a good job, though, of keeping to her Pilgrim's Progress motif and Harold certainly suffers some existential alienation toward the end of his journey. "No one could imagine such loneliness. He shouted once but no sound came back. He felt the cold deep inside him as if even his bones were freezing over. He closed his eyes to sleep, convinced he would not survive, and having no will to fight that."

A word not often used any more to describe people is "pluck" as in "He was a plucky chap" meaning he had the will to persevere when everything seemed to conspire against him. Harold was plucky and you'll want to read about his unlikely pilgrimage to see if he was lucky as well.

"Someone" by Alice McDermott is a tale that spans the life of Marie Commeford. It opens to find Marie, then an inquisitive seven year old, waiting for her father on the stoop of their Brooklyn row house. It is from this stoop that we are introduced to quite a few characters from Marie's predominantly Irish neighborhood. What often seems like a chance and flippant encounter always stays with little Marie. As the story progresses with Marie's age, the cast of characters from her stoop and her street continue to entwine in her life.

At the beginning of the story, Marie lives with her parents and her brother Gabe who is preparing for a life in the priesthood. Marie's father has a drinking problem, and her mother often has to go into the city to retrieve him after an afternoon binge. He was a nice and gentle man, however, and Marie loved him. Her best friend Gerty lived just down the street, and she spent a lot of time there as well. Gabe goes into the seminary, but shortly after having his own parish he leaves the priesthood under mysterious circumstances.

As time passes, some of the people in Marie's life leave also. She tries to learn how to cook, but finds she is quite a failure at it. She meets a boy and plans to marry once she finished school. Suddenly one day, her boyfriend tells her is going to marry someone else. So once she finishes her schooling, her only option is to get a job. She looks and looks and finally gets hired at the local funeral parlor, where once again the lives of everyone in the neighborhood meet. Her job there is to be the "consoling angel." She greets mourners, takes their coats, and directs them to the appropriate room. It is here that she meets a string of beaus.

Marie meets a man named Tom at a party. They get married, move into an apartment, and have a child. The birthing process almost kills Marie, but through the course of her life she will have three more children. They age, move to the suburbs, and raise their children in a fairly normal fashion. At one point after the death of Marie's mother, her brother Gabe has a mental breakdown. After treatment he goes to stay with Marie, and it's just like the old days of Brooklyn.

Alice McDermott has woven a tale so thickly intertwined. The characters come and go, but they are so memorable, and they each leave a little something with Marie. The book is so detailed that you can follow the decline of their Brooklyn neighborhood and envision each room in the funeral parlor. You felt the emotions, as had Marie, the feeling of awkwardness at your first kiss, the first night as a married couple, the pride in your child. This is a fantastic novel.

J. J. Abrams is a creative soul. He has written over a dozen movie scripts, was the producer for five of them, created about a half dozen television series, was the producer for fifteen shows, wrote the scripts for and directed several of those, composed theme music for three programs, and acted in five movies as well as a television show. His work has been nominated for and has won numerous awards, including five Emmy's. Clearly this is a talented man. Now he has conceived a novel entitled S. The writing credit is listed as Doug Dorst, but it is Abrams' name on the spine label. With Abrams involvement, it is not surprising how very inventive the book turns out to be.

When purchased, the book comes in a cardboard slipcover. But once that is removed, it appears to be an entirely different volume entitled "Ship of Thesus" written by V. M. Straka. The cover, the spine, the title page, and all the copyright information indicates that this book is "Ship of Thesus", published in 1949 by Wing Shoe Press. The pages are even yellowed. Included with the book are twenty-one additional items: maps, postcards, photographs, letters that are two or three pages long, and more which supplement the story of the book.

When the book is opened, there is a huge shock for anyone who cares about books. The margins throughout are covered with handwriting. Some of the lines in the book are underlined. There are even doodles in several places. Making for colorful pages, some of the writing is in red ink, some in orange, some in blue, some in black, and some in pencil-lead gray. The handwriting is in two quite distinct styles: one is a flowing script and the other a block print.

So, besides the actual printed text of the book, there is the handwritten story in the margins to read. The written notes consist of a conversation between two college students who are studying the text. Eric was the first to make notes in the book using a pencil. Jen found the book, became absorbed in it, and wrote replies to Eric in blue ink. She challenged him by writing, "you totally missed something important." He continued the dialog in black ink. At first they choose not to meet but instead leave the book in a designated spot in the library and write messages to each other inside it. As their relationship changes, so does the color of their inks. They go through the book at least twice, and their later notes comment on the earlier ones. Confusing? Yes, at first, but it's all very entertaining. Even when the messages are ordinary, like when Jen and Eric complain about professors or tease each other, their conversation is fun to read. The notes grow engrossing as the two students try to discover the true identity of V.M.Straka, a writer who reputedly worked in the resistance during WW II. "Ship of Thesus" is the last of Straka's nineteen novels. Eric and Jen believe it is full of clues to exactly who he was and to his wartime activities.

For readers who like straightforward stories with all questions answered by the end, this book would be a nightmare. Just the layout can be difficult to follow as the plot trickles through the pages in different colors and handwriting. However, it is a book that is as intriguing as it is different. Abram's creativity and originality is on display. The entire story is never told, but there is enough to spark curiosity and to be thought provoking. In S, it is not the destination but the journey through it which makes the book worthwhile reading.

Nineteen year old Matthew Homes received a writing assignment that he is determined to finish. The person who gave him this task was not his teacher or professor, but his doctor. Matthew was a patient in a mental hospital, and even after his release he continued his story. This homework is what makes up Where the Moon Isn't, Nathan Filer's first novel.

Matthew has a distinctive voice, and his story rambles around as different thoughts occur to him. He describes his life from elementary school to the psych ward. Working up to relating what happened the night ten years ago that changed everything, Matthew introduces the reader to his parents, his extended family, and his brother. "His name is Simon. I think you're going to like him. I really do. But in a couple of pages he'll be dead. And he was never the same after that."

Not only was Simon not the same, neither was Matthew. The family was on vacation at the Oceanside Holiday Park. The boys went out to play late one night, and only Matthew came back. Though the police called it an accident, the family's reactions make that finding suspect. Matthew talks about the details, but not until the end of the book does he explain exactly what happened to his brother that night. Instead, he talks about his life. Immediately after the family returned home, Matthew's mom decided to take him out of school to teach him at home. That decision not only isolated Matthew but gave him a less than ideal education. Matthew was a clever child at nine years old and passed the curriculum easily. Soon he realized that his perfect test scores made his mother feel useless. He began to make mistakes on purpose, so she would have something to teach him. It became obvious that Mum was using homeschooling Matthew to avoid her own problems.

According to Matthew, he did make a friend immediately once he returned to school. But Jacob came from a troubled family, and there were problems. As his illness grew worse, Matthew could barely function, and he ended up in the hospital. His description of living in a mental health facility is very detailed. He tells his readers exactly what it is like to be kept on an acute psychiatric ward for day after day after day after day. The pills he takes with their common side effects, the injections he has, the tests he takes, the tedium of the everyday schedule, and the meetings where everyone talks about him make Matthew feel everything he does is decided for him. The one thing he thinks he has any control over is the way he chooses to tell his story. He keeps on writing after he is allowed to move into an apartment on his own. Through his relapse and return to the hospital, then back to independent living, Matthew continues with his story.

As his mind moves in and out of madness, Matthew's story gets so dark it is difficult to see any happiness for this character. However, Where the Moon Isn't shows Matthew's resiliency, his strength as he deals with his illness, and most of all, his love for his brother and his family. Moving and memorable, this book is well worth reading.

Jhumpa Lahiri has given us one of the great fiction reads of the year with her book The Lowland that begins with the lives of two brothers born fifteen months apart in India. Although opposites they still have a very close relationship as they are growing up, but their lives take them in radically different directions.

The younger Udayan is charismatic and impulsive. He remains in India and is drawn into the militant Naxalite movement which originated in the 1960s, the period of Udayan's involvement. He is passionate in his beliefs and very willing to take risks. The older Subhash on the other hand is more serious and cautious in life, and he does not share his brother's political passion. Subhash moves to America and pursues an academic life in scientific research while Udayan becomes increasingly involved in the tactics of guerilla warfare against his government.

Character development in The Lowland is impeccable, and the description of life in Calcutta is vivid. The book is both historical and suspenseful and revolves around a tragedy with one brother and the life changing consequences to the other. The title of the book refers to a piece of land between two ponds in the neighborhood where the brothers grew up, and it figures prominently in the story line.

Spanning fifty years, two continents, and two generations Jhumpa Lahiri describes commitment to honorable intentions and endurance to the rejection of those intentions. The Lowland is an engrossing and complex read with revelations that continue right to the end.

The author won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her debut collection Interpreter of the Maladies written in 1999. The Lowland is her fourth book and should appeal to many readers.